UI still sub-par 2 years later. Why don't we care?

This topic has received a lot of attention over the last months not only here on TL, but also on Reddit and the official forums. If you're new to the discussion, please add your voice. Should you agree, you can support it by keeping the threads alive and the discussion going.

Counting the beta, SC2 will be two years old in March - and the game's interface has barely developed over that span. While the lack of LAN support is the major issue for most people (as frequently demonstrated in tournaments with connection issues), I feel that the general feel and usability of the new battle.net UI are just as frustrating for the average user.

Sure. We've seen some improvement with chat being added. But it's telling that we had to ask for that in the first place. And we have vague promises for the map marketplace / arcade to fix the completely broken custom game scene with HotS. But there's so much more.

Personally, the game's UI discourages me from playing on a daily basis. When the new battle.net was developed, we were promised that we'd "never want to be offline again". But every single time I log on, I feel utterly alone, maybe play a game or two, and then leave again. Both in SC/BW and WC3, I'd idle around forever, hang out in channels or waste time in custom games.

So what's different?

Communicating and socializing is too hard

Imagine this ... (credit: Goblinoid)

Chat. It still sucks. Simple commands like /w outside of games would make life tremendously easier. Real channels would be great. Or sending messages to my whole friends list. At the moment, any act of communication is a hassle; I either have to navigate through my friends list (which could be a lot more accessible too, by the way) to message people; I have to clumsily navigate through menus to send messages to other folks (or add them to my list); I even have to click through menus to ignore or report people.

Everything could be so much easier with a decent chat interface, yet we seem to be stuck with the farce of a system we currently have.

Clan support (+clan channels). This rocked in WC3. You had a place to meet with friends and clan mates, and you could even moderate your channels. You actually had a sense of community while online. You had a "home base" for recruitment, contacts or fun times with trivia and quiz bots.

Automated tournaments. Where are they? Why was such a great feature removed? Despite losing quickly in most of them, I often played them in WC3. You got to meet new people, had a competition that wasn't ladder, and had an incentive to play for the tournament-exclusive portraits. See this Blizzard page with more details on Auto Tournaments.

Simply playing the game can be hard at times.

Or how about that? (credit: Goblinoid)

A working custom game system. Despite the chaotic first impression, WC3's system worked. All the SC2 popularity system does is kill any incentive to play maps that aren't on the first two pages. Also, Blizzard's attitude of blocking development instead of encouraging it have led to a custom scene that's pretty much dead. The vocal criticism of the ridiculous limits on map developer freedom have died down because most developers have stopped developing and caring.

I had hoped to see countless maps by now, exploring the boundaries of the map editor and creativity, but all we have are some DotA clones, some TD maps and nothing too exciting else. What has SC2's custom system achieved after all this time? Next to nothing. What is WC3's custom legacy? It spawned an entire new genre (MOBA games) which has since eclipsed RTS games both in player and viewer numbers.

AT vs. RT issues in team games. While team games are looked down upon by many, they nontheless enjoy a large following. The strict separation of AT and RT from WC3 was scrapped for SC2 in favor of short queue times, but despite having a matchmaking system implemented, it's still prone to abuse and frustration. Things like 2/3man ATs signing up for 3/4man RTs is just one example of many. Currently, the team ladders are a sick joke and the results / ratings and the general activity reflect the utter neglect with which this issue has been treated.

Analyzing is overly hard as well.

Remember Warcraft 3's online statistics?

Shared replay watching. It was such a great feature in SC/BW. Requested since beta, and we'll probably never see it. Friends analyzing their play, clans evaluating their performance or tournament casters commentating on replays: Everyone could benefit from actually doing this ingame, instead of tediously sharing and synchronizing replays.

Statistics. Where are they? Why can't I see my race-specific %, or my odds on certain maps? And why are lower league players belittled by having their losses hidden, even when everyone knows that those people still here after two years must have realized that it's a competetive game and losing is part of the deal? WarCraft 3 not only had rather detailed stats ingame, but also a wealth of information available on the b.net website, down to individual map performance and win-% by hero choice!

The whole league system. Sure, we all know how and why the MMR works right now. But why scrap the system that worked so great in WC3? Right now, we can't compare anyone (regardless of whether you think ladder matters or not). Grandmaster league helped, but only if you're looking at pros. I can't even judge whether I'm better than my buddy or not, because we're both in meaningless divisions of pointless leagues, and our MMR is invisible (note: this is an example. I don't even have any buddies left playing SC2 to compare with.)

Since quite a number of people got upset over this part I'll gladly elaborate to avoid future confusion: In WarCraft 3, there was one large regional ladder, and everyone played on it. You weren't gold league #5, divison #28, rank #59 - but you were [Region] rank 1234/5678 once you had reached a certain (skill) level. Up to that point, there was the leveling system, which reflected activity and progress by ranking up (or down) in levels (from 1-50) with wins and losses.

We all know why this system was abolished; so people could feel comfortable in their divisions, not being a number in the vast anonymous public ladder. But what's the point of a league if people above or below yours match your skill? What's the point of 100 man divisions if you'll probably never speak to these people? SC2 is a competetive game, be it in bronze league or at GM level, yet except for the best 200 players of each continent, there's no real means of comparison.

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Things went wrong when Blizzard decided to develop the new B.Net from scratch, and to employ a casual game / console developer for the job. I have nothing personal against Greg Canessa, but I feel it shows that he developed for PopCap and Xbox Live before. That by itself needn't have been a bad thing, but why for the love of all that is holy did everything that worked well in previous games have to be removed? Hell, the better part of Blizzard's fame came from releasing games with fantastic interfaces and great functions, yet SC2 is a step back (or several) compared to 2003's WC3 or even 1998's SC.

And why all this? Well, of course because it works for Blizzard. Enough people were happy with what they got, not enough people cared. The folks who just bought the game for the campaign obviously didn't bother with the menu much, and the competetive 1vs1 crowd basically just needs a working matchmaking system (which is great, btw, and the only redeeming feature). But there's a huge number of players interested in socializing, custom maps and analyzing their play. Those that haven't left have grown complacent or jaded with Blizzard's ignorance.

The adding of chat and the scrapped forum real-ID feature have shown what players can achieve when the voice concerns; the complete lack of development in the meantimes is a great sign of how little will suffice for the majority to accept their fate.

Some user "@Bashiok could you elaborate a bit mor on why exactly blizzard thinks that a general open chat channel like inn D2 or SC1 is a bad idea?Bashiok: "@CaptRaven The good is minuscule compared to the bad, and we have to actually support these things..."

Some other user "@Bashiok any plans for any guild/clan features?"Bashiok: "@Millerjoeblue We'd love to offer some kind of support for social groups, but it's on a wish list at the moment."

And again "@Bashiok I have a question about friends and chat in D3. Is it possible to add someone to a friends list? Also, is there a global chat?"Bashiok: @Varastus21 Yes there's multiple different types of friends lists. Global chat like you want to spam all your friends? no."

And again "@Bashiok thats a bummer wanted to ask when the EU beta keys were coming . But a real question, can you play Diablo 3 offline?"Bashiok: @QuriousAlonsus No.

And again "@Bashiok thanks for your answer. so chat channels are still part of the game?"Bashiok: "@kultbot They're in there right now. Unless people are expecting general open channels? We've consistently said we won't have those."

Thanks to everyone who has kept and still keeps the discussion here, on Reddit and especially on the official forums alive. Shoutout to Boomz on EU and PoweRForgeD on US for posting on the official forums; both threads there have reached "popular" status. Also a huge thanks to voy for translating the topic for the polish boards. Keep it up!

I definitely agree in the sense that I feel alone while playing, if there was more of a social element in between games or with other players i encounter on the ladder, i might be inclined to play more.

there are so many things that BNet could succeed at, but instead fails miserably. You would think they would try to emulate their past successes.

Personally, I would mess myself if there was a ranked 1v1 (2v2) team melee quickmatch option. :D

Imagine Huk/MC vs MMA/MVP <3

I understand that blizzard is in business to make money, but there are certainly ways that they could monitorize things such as tournaments. For example, everyone could have a buy-in to tournaments and they could just take a nominal cut of the prize. EZ

Yea I agree but this is like beating the dead horse bro, what do you mean "we don't care?" , Do you realize how many threads there is on this already? Everybody cares! I think we will just have to wait till HOTS man, I think WoL to HOTS will be like Starcraft1 to Broodwar, epic and a lot better. Gl hf !

it certainly is a step down from the old battle.net system, sure you might be able to check what friends are on a little easier compared to the old system

i.e in the old system you /f l (/friends list) see whos on then /f m (/friends message) to message your friends. sure that was a little clunky but it was much more enjoyable to log on and be in a channel and have random conversations with people xD it added a little more life to the game.

Bnet sucks.The custom game part especially. You'll never find any new UMS maps because there's no way to promote it in-game. I hate that I have to watch the youtube circle every time I look at a different menu. But these are just little annoyances.

I'm much more interested in having a good game to play..(but even that's questionable according to many)

There definately is a large social element that is missing by comparison to war3. As far as stats go, I'm willing to yield there, if you care that much there is sc2gears which is fantastic. They've done a good job making it so all but GM and really top end master league are at 50% win rates; so it really doesn't matter at all to see your win rate.

Lack of Clan Support is just mind boggling... but it obviously won't happen til HoTS at best.

They don't want to show statistics to the players because they think you could easily become sad when you see your winrates and stop playing. Thats why they also dont show you the losses in all leagues below masters.

Yeah, Blizzard really has created a sub-standard product in this department. Pretty shocking, really.

Sad thing is, we have no leverage with them. I really doubt there is a remotely significant portion of the community that is going to choose not to buy HotS based off of lack of clan support and simultaneous replays in WoL. As such, we're left hoping they throw us a bone some time.

We really need a filter for the friends list. Just a simple input bar where you can type (part of) a name and only matching friends remain. Happens so many times I see pros with big friend lists just scroll back and forth to find a certain player it's painful.

I wholeheartedly agree that Battle.net 0.2 is a massive failure, that discourages a lot of people, me included, from playing regularly. It's two steps backwards compared to some other services or even to the old Battle.net.

The menu and it's features barely changed since the beta days, but back then Blizzard promised everything. It took them half a year after release just to add a basic group chat functionality. I wish for an entire SC2 menu system, thus a Battle.net 0.2 remake.